Cricket is the most American of sports. If only because of the fact that without cricket, the United States of America wouldn't exist in the first place.

FLASHBACK: Frederick, Prince of Wales, eldest son of George II, was, by all accounts, a bit of an arse. His mum called him a beast and a monster. And his dad seriously reckoned he was "wechselbalg" - a werewolf. And then, in 1749, Frederick got smacked in the head by a cricket ball. Two years later he died of an infected cyst in his head, leaving the way clear for Fred's slightly mad son to become George III.

Four years later the British General Braddock marched on Fort Duquesne (later to be re-named Pittsburgh). So confident was Braddock about kicking French and Indian ass, that he brought heavy rollers with him so he can make a cricket pitch. The resulting massacre - in which Braddock died - was the first time the supposedly invincible British had been defeated on American soil. "Aha!" thought one of the colonial militia officers who survived the battle.

May 4, 1778: That same officer is now commander of the American forces who are rebelling against the increasingly bonkers King George (whose dad, you remember, was hit on the head with a cricket ball). Having survived a savage winter in Valley Forge, George Washington is now rebuilding his army's shattered morale with courts martial, drills, theatrical entertainments and...cricket. Amazingly, he even played the game himself.

"This day His Excellency dined with G[eneral] Nox" wrote first lieutenant George Ewing in his diary, "and after dinner did us the honor to play at Wicket with us." Thus fortified, the almost entirely British rebel army marched off - and knocked King George's non-cricket playing German mercenaries for six. Huzzah!

So, given that the United States owes its very existence to the game, how come America didn't hug cricket to its breast? Well, it did. By the middle of the 19th century, cricket clubs were established in every American city. The first ever international game (in any sport) was played by the United States and Canada at the St. George's Cricket Club in Manhattan in 1844. Cricket wasn't an American sport - cricket was the American sport.

So what happened? Last month I walked through the leafy, super affluent suburbs of northern Philadelphia to catch a game at Haverford cricket club. They've been playing cricket here since 1833. Haverford is posh. Dead posh. There are Indian and Pakistani accents here. And West Indian, South African and English voices as well. There are maybe 30 people watching the match. The air is filled with the hum of insects - and the hubbub that is the unmistakable sound of the rules of cricket being patiently explained to Americans. This is the state of US cricket in 2004 (only one member of the current US cricket team was born on American soil). Last week I went to see the Philadelphia Phillies at the brand spanking new, $346 million Citizens Bank Park mega-stadium. It is enormous. It has to be. It accommodates 43,000 comfortably seated baseball fans - a significant proportion of whom are a tad on the large side. In between innings the crowd are entertained by an enormous green monster called the Phillie Phanatic, who fires hotdogs into the crowd from a huge cannon that is driven round the outfield by a giant pig. We see a Phillies fan (who makes Michael Moore look like Calista Flockhart) heave himself to his feet and start screaming into the terrified face of the New York Mets fan sat behind him. We see blue-collar Americans at their mulleted, flag sporting, weak-beer worst. And their rude, berating-the-preening-millionaire-prima donnas best. In the nice seats are the nice people. The people with health insurance. Entire families of orthodontically perfect uber-yanks. And now the Phanatic has leapt onto a platform and is dancing to raucous rock'n'roll with scantily clad teenage girls. We are - what? - fifteen miles from Haverford? But we're in another universe.

But it could - it should - be cricket that we are watching here today. OK, this being America, the game would have mutated slightly. There'd be shorter innings. And more spitting. So why did baseball win out? Not because it's less boring. Trust me on this. The only time baseball gets even slightly exciting is when a batter actually manages to hit the ball. This happens so infrequently that you could read a book between home runs. Dan - the John Travolta faced US sports fan - is explaining the rules to Wendy, an Englishwoman.

"Ah!" she says, "So it's like rounders!"

She's wrong. Baseball isn't like rounders. Baseball is rounders. And rounders is baseball. Same game. Different name. A few baseball historians still cling grimly to the tired old patriotic lie that baseball in an entirely American invention. Despite the fact that the game was mentioned in Jane Austen's 1798 chick-lit bonkbuster Northanger Abbey. And that the first rules of the game - Ball mit Freystäten (Oder Das Englische Base-ball) - were published by Guts Muths in the town of Schnepfenthal in the Duchy of Gotha in 1796.

So how did it happen? How did dumb ole rounders kick regal cricket's ass? The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that American cricket shot itself through both kneecaps to avoid physical contact with the working classes. When the rest of the cricketing world embraced professionalism (cricketing code for "let the oiks have a go"), the American cricketing establishment remained stubbornly elitist. Many clubs abandoned the game altogether and turned to golf and tennis. This happened all over the USA. Except, bizarrely, in Philadelphia. Which brings us back to leafy, idyllic Haverford college. In the second half of the 19th century, with rounders on the rise everywhere, Haverford became the heart of the cricket resistance.

Baseball was a "growing evil", "a trysting place for all sorts of immorality", a "game for boys and ragtags". Worse than that, it was a game increasingly played by Irish and German immigrants. This wasn't just a matter of sporting aesthetics. This was class hatred tinged with racism.

"Anybody can play baseball" wrote one scholar, "and the result is that anybody does play." In 1911 Haverford cancelled a cricket match against a West Indian team when it was learnt that some of their opponents might actually be (oh my golly gosh) black Americans, Meanwhile Haverford proudly sent touring teams to England where they fared well against the posher universities and top public schools. But back home, they were running out of people to play.

But it was the MCC that finally did for American cricket. After World War I, the sport underwent a revival in the USA.. And then along came the Imperial Cricket Conference (an MCC front organisation) and shut the Americans out from the international game. Isolated, American cricket finally withered and died. And baseball took over, as easy as that.

It was the British Empire that finally did for American cricket. Which was fitting, given that it was cricket that lost Britain its American colonies in the first place.